The Function of Fictional Lives

A new B.A. thesis with the Brontës as a subject:

The Function of Fictional Lives: A Study of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre from Publication to the Present
by Taylor Patterson
B.A. in English, May 2018, Washington College

Popularity, relevance, art. These three words are crucial fixations our current society seems fixed upon. Any movie, play, or book must pass the test of popularity to be deemed as a benefit to our culture. The shortcomings to this strategy lie in the biases present in those who decide what is going to be popular. The American masses tend to gravitate towards those plot lines that are at the surface level entertaining and light. Many of the popular films in the last few years, such as The Hunger Games and Divergent, have featured dystopian fantasies. These films are based on popular book series that also cultivated a large following of fans. Although the Hollywood film versions of these trilogies do differ from the books—a necessity as they cater to different markets and very rarely would the majority of people want to sit through a three to four hour movie that captures every aspect of the original book—both reach a wide variety of people all across the country and the world, commonly known as bestsellers. George Woodcock tackles the distinction between novels of literary merit and books of popular fiction that fill the bestseller’s lists in his review “Books as Literature vs. Books as Commodity.”

And a publication on Emily Brontë's anniversary on a local magazine in Menorca (Spain):

Commemoració del bicentenari del naixement d’Emily Brontë (1818–1848)
Cloquells Tudurí, Carme.
Revista de Menorca, [en línia], 2019, Vol. 98, p. 339-45